Tag Archives: LGBT rights

Street art turns political in Georgia

TBILISI/Georgia, JULY 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — From Basquiat to Banksy, politically charged street art has been a fixture of western cities for decades. Now, though, the walls and underpasses of Georgian capital Tbilisi are becoming an open-air gallery for a similar sort of subversive expression.

“It started after the war,” 34-year-old Natia, who runs workshops for aspiring street artists, said referring to the 2008 war with Russia. “One of our friends started using a stencil of Putin’s face, and people just got more creative.”

Today, that protest focuses on two of the most important issues for Georgia’s increasingly vocal liberal youth — gay rights and the decriminalization of marijuana. Graphic artist Musya Qeburia, 23, witnessed a police raid in June on her friend’s party. The police detained several guests for urine tests.

“They just came and took them for no reason, I was angry,” she said. In response, she erected what has become Tbilisi’s most celebrated piece, a line of figures, including Yoda, Super Mario and Brussels statue the Manneken Piss queuing to offer urine samples to a pair of Georgian police officers, one of whom looks like Chuck Norris (see photo on page 1).

The piece went viral on social networks, and according to Musya it has had a big impact.

But the reaction is not always positive. Rusa, 29, with three friends repainted a prominent central Tbilisi staircase in the colours of the rainbow flag, the symbol of gay rights.

“It was a silent, anonymous protest, silent because of the violence last year,” said Rusa, referring to an anti-gay riot in Tbilisi in 2013. “There were pictures of the staircase, people noticed. Then two days later city hall came and destroyed the staircase and reconstructed it (without the paint).”

Musya is undeterred. “They can only destroy,” she said. “They can’t make anything beautiful.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)

Anti gay protesters march in Georgia

May 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian Orthodox groups rallied in Tbilisi against a new law designed to protect same-sex relationships. Media estimated that there were several hundred people at the rally, underlining the conservative nature of Georgian society. The Georgian Orthodox Church retains a lot of power in Georgia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)

Anti gay protesters march in Georgia

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)

Georgian Patriarch wants family day

MAY 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The head of the Georgian Orthodox Church Patriarch Ilia II called for people to mark a new day of “Strength of Family and Respect for Parents” on May 17, the same day as the International Day Against Homophobia. The Orthodox Church is regarded as anti-gay rights. Georgia has introduced a law protecting same-sex rights.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 184, published on May 14 2014)

Georgia’s anti-discrimination law fuels tension

MAY 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s parliament passed an anti-discrimination bill it needed to implement for further integration into the EU but the conservative Orthodox Church has said it will protest against it.

Media reported that Georgia’s parliament passed the law unanimously.

The bill, its supporters and its detractors, give a good insight into the division coursing through Georgian society between modernisers and traditionalists.

The EU, which Georgia is desperate to join, has called on legislation that protects the rights of minorities. This has been generally accepted by Georgians, although the conservative Orthodox Church continues to rile against it.

And the Orthodox Church in Georgia is powerful. Patriarch Ilia II is considered a genuine power-broker, politicians cosy up to religious leaders and priests lead demonstrations. Last year, priests led a march against a gay rights parade that triggered violence. Tolerance in modern day Georgia only goes so far.

For the Church, the new laws are virtually heresy and it has promised to protest against it. Their main difficulty with the law is its protection of homosexuality.

Patriarch Ilia II was succinct. “Not a single believer will accept such law,” he said.

For NGOs pushing for the new legislation it has also been a slight disappointment. They were disappointed that the law finally adopted had been watered down from its original state.

Expect more tension between modernisers and traditionalists.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 183, published on May 7 2014)

Homophobia seethes in Kazakhstan

ALMATY/Kazakhstan, APRIL 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In Kazakhstan’s former capital, the weekend is for parties but, it appears, not everybody is invited.

Down a side street, just off one of the main streets running through Almaty, a group of five or six young men wearing leather jackets smoked cigarettes and shouted insults at the men queuing to enter a gay bar on the opposite side of the road.

The insults grew louder and stronger. Nobody stepped in to stop the abuse.

Being homosexual in Kazakhstan is far from easy. The Soviet legacy of the punishment of buggery and the revival of the strong traditional values of the country’s macho nomadic heritage both play against homosexuality.

This, though, according to a gay rights activist in Almaty goes against the tradition of the city itself.

“Almaty has a history of more than 100 years of mild tolerance towards homosexuality,” the activist who preferred to stay anonymous said in hushed tones below chatter floating across a central Almaty coffee shop.

“During the Tsarist times, Panfilov Park (then Pushkin Park) was used as a pick-up place by Russian men. This was the most gay-friendly city in the whole of Central Asia.”

But now momentum across the former Soviet Union, led by Moscow, has triggered a raft of legislation against homosexuality. Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament has been holding an ongoing debate on just how to repress homosexuality in society.

A university professor in Almaty described the impact. “There are several professionals who conceal their sexual orientation in the workplace,” he said. Almaty’s former reputation as a tolerant city appears broken.

ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)

Kyrgyzstan considers anti-gay bill

MARCH 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a similar move to Russia’s controversial law of 2013, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament published a draft bill that would outlaw spreading information about gay issues. The bill is currently only published online for public discussion but this is the first step to turning it into law.

(News report from Issue No. 178, published on April 2 2014)

Gay men suffer abuses in Kyrgyzstan

JAN. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report accusing police in Kyrgyzstan of deliberately extorting bribes from gay men. The HRW report accused the police of detaining, beating and raping homosexuals. The Kyrgyz authorities denied the allegations.

(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)

Kazakhstan could pass anti-gay law

OCT. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Momentum is building inside Kazakhstan’s parliament to pass a law that restricts homosexuals. Homosexuality has been legal since 1998 in Kazakhstan but a handful of lawmakers want to reverse this. Earlier this year Russia banned so-called homosexual propaganda.

(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)

Kazakh MPs call for anti-gay law

OCT. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Where Russia goes, Kazakhstan often follows. This mantra is certainly true of economic and international affairs and now it appears to extend to social law-making.

Kazakh parliamentarians have been making speeches and canvassing support to bring in a law similar to the one passed by Russia earlier this year that banned so-called homosexual propaganda from being taught at schools.

The Russian law triggered an international outcry and calls to boycott Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi next year.

But a group of reactionary parliamentarians in Kazakhstan have seized on the Russian experience as their chance to push through a similar law.

Bakhytbek Smagul, a member of the lower house of the Kazakh parliament for President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan party, has been leading the drive to ban so-called homosexual propaganda in Kazakhstan.

And he has built support, despite homosexuality being legalised in Kazakhstan since 1998.

(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)